Love, art and creativity can change the world.

Born of the hand of AZULIK, our foundation dedicates its efforts to supporting and working together with communities, focusing on the care of children, animals and the preservation and recovery of the oceans, jungles and forests. ‍For ten years, we have been promoting the culture and values of native communities and the integral development of their possibilities.

Additionally, we have been collaborating with other local foundations and NPOs, such as Guardianes de la Semilla, Centinelas del Agua and Títeres Tulum, which address issues regarding cultivation, water treatment and promotion of native culture, respectively.

Currently, through our fundraising efforts and initiatives, we develop social and environmental projects that seek to improve the lives of both native and contemporary tribes, as well as our impact on nature and society as a whole.

* Enchanting Transformation was created in 2009 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the State of Texas, under the tax laws of the USA.

CURRENT PROJECTS

YUCATAN: Art School for Communities

IK NOW defines itself as the root and gateway for a new understanding of the transformative power of artistic creation. A school focusing on the universal language of visual art in a myriad of iterations will operate year round through a variety of bespoke programs and bring together local residents of the Yucatan peninsula as well as visiting students and scholars from the entire world. Through the shared experience of art, mankind’s highest form of expression, the school will foster and develop the sense of belonging to a community.‍Our schools will be situated in natural, wild and living environments. We challenge ourselves not to cut any trees in the creation of these spaces, working with the particularities that this brings into our work methodology.

With irregular, organic asymmetry, we seek to create experiences inspired by nature, where the lack of control of the space offers an identity with a unique style that does not have straight lines, but establishes flexible gateways of interrelation with the community, offering optimal conditions for reflection between living beings.‍Over a period of 12 months we envision building 17 classrooms, including the fundamental structure and respective facilities: a clay kiln, a metal workshop, printing workshop including 3D printing, a silver workshop, a glass workshop, a wood engraving workshop, a weaving workshop, a plastic recycling program, as well as including doctor’s offices for disciplines as cardiology, odontology and nutrition; acupuncture, pranic healing and Mayan ancestral medicine; and an oncology center.

ART SCHOOL CONTENT

Our working premise was to imagine state of the art workshops accessible to local skilled teachers and students and allowing for a wide range of working techniques. ‍‍The curriculum and teaching methods will be completely idiosyncratic, drawing from evolutionary contemporary pedagogy and on-site experiences.

WORKSHOPS

The most relevant workshops to launch the school project are:

A ceramic and pottery workshop (including a clay kiln for high and low temperature)

A woodcarving workshop (including wood carving instruments)

A metal sculpture workshop

A stone-carving workshop

A printing workshop and a 3D printing workshop

An engraving workshop

FUTURE PROJECTS

PATAGONIA

The Mapuche-Cayún community was established with the sole purpose of protecting their land. Thanks to their commitment, several hydroelectric projects that threatened to destroy thousands of hectares of native forest have been halted. Within 230 hectares, including 5 kilometers of coast along two lakes, we will build artists residences to house projects involving the native communities.

AMAZONIA

There are 1000 Shipibo communities in this land. They preserve an ancestral knowledge of medicinal plants and are natural-born healers.

We will build artist’s residences, where artists will work with native communities and the works of art created here will be sold with 100% of the proceeds going to the local native communities to be used for the creation of fish farms and greenhouse farming: The fish farms will provide an alternative for the local people to eating fish from the rivers contaminated by illegal mining. The greenhouses will help them enrich their diets and avoid the continuous burning of hundreds of thousands of acres a year to obtain rich soil for yucca plantations.Guests of three concept hotels that will be built in this area (a hotel in the City of Maldonado; a mobile Floating Hotel will take you to explore Amazonia across the river Madre de Dios; and a Jungle Hotel in the Biosphere Reserve) will be transported by seaplane to be introduced to and connect with the different communities, in an effort to encourage donations and participation in these projects.

The property is 2300 hectares, including 15 kilometers along the banks of the most important river in the region, the 700m wide Madre de Dios River, and another 15 kilometers along the Quebrada Palma Real River.

FASHION+COMMUNITIES

A member of the AZULIK's Tribe will travel around the world visiting native communities, filming documentary footage about their unique techniques and designs of their textile crafts, providing them with fabrics previously unavailable to them in order to improve the quality of their products, moving beyond the readily available materials that are very difficult to manipulate and work with.

We will introduce the resulting fair trade products to the fashion world as brands that respect their origin, promoting the value of the knowledge and technique of these native tribes.

AZULIK aims to reconnect individuals and tribes –both native and postmodern– with themselves, with one another, with others and with the environment.